Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
July 10, 2002
Family meetings a tool to help families find common purpose
Gatherings enable families to communicate needs, set reasonable goals
By Carole Norris Greene
As summer approach-ed, everyone in the Pedersen household in Omaha, Neb., secretly harbored expectations about the upcoming vacation time:
•Dad, an attorney, longed for more nights at home free from helping with homework and school or parish meetings.
•Mom expected to spend more time at the pool and playing with the children.
•The children themselves couldn't wait to be "scot-free" — no school, no homework!
No one, however, realized his or her goal that year:
•Doing house chores and summer activities replaced schoolwork for the pre-teen children.
•Mom couldn't regularly go to the pool with all of the children, as the extra chores the children had to complete left them little opportunity to go as a group.
•Dad was disappointed because youth baseball season called the family out of the house two or three nights a week.
After a few frustrating summers like this one, the Pedersens began to sit around the kitchen table on a set evening during a weekday in early May with lists of what each family member wanted most to do during the summer, including where to go on family vacation.
"My husband, Dave, and I would ask everyone to have a `top two things' list and then we would begin to fill in our summer calendar accordingly," recalled Mary Jo Pedersen, a family-life coordinator for the Archdiocese of Omaha. "There was plenty of negotiating and some arguing but most summers we ended up getting the kids' favorite things done and most of the others. We stopped setting ourselves up for disappointments with unreasonable expectations."
For the Pedersens, having family meetings was the best way to do family goal-setting. They offer their formula to other families who feel pulled in every direction without a sense of purpose as they juggle their home, school/work, community and faith lives.
"Everyone gathers together to talk about what's coming up on the calendar and what we need to do together to get things done," Pedersen said. "When cousins came to visit in the summer, a plan was set up for cleaning the house, organizing the toys and planning trips to the zoo and water park. Then the kids knew ahead of time how much money they had to save for doing the things they wanted to do."
While she and her husband initially led the meetings, Pedersen said that, over time, the older children would help put the agenda together.
Not everyone was happy after every meeting, she added, "but most of the time people felt they had been heard, and they knew that sometimes you got your way and sometimes you didn't."
Today, the Pedersen children live in three states and communicate by e-mail far in advance of summer and the holidays to make sure they plan to have time together. It is more complicated now that these adult children have jobs out of the area, but they value being together, according to their mother, and so they are willing to give a little more to be together.
"I think an advantage of family planning and goal setting is that kids begin to understand that there is something called the `common good' that sometimes has to supercede their own individual priorities," said Pedersen. "That's an important part of being a good family member and citizen."
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